


Indirect approach

by Dunloth



Series: KakaIru Mini Bingo 2019 [2]
Category: Naruto
Genre: But You Promised, Challenge: kakairu_fest Mini-Bingo, Community: kakairu_fest, Established Relationship, M/M, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-29
Updated: 2020-02-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22958251
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dunloth/pseuds/Dunloth
Summary: The enemy interrogator will use Kakashi's precious person to try to break him. Is it possible to wield love as a weapon if one doesn't understand it?
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Series: KakaIru Mini Bingo 2019 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1649836
Comments: 4
Kudos: 83
Collections: KakaIru 2019 Mini Bingo!





	Indirect approach

**Author's Note:**

>   
> Written for the KakaIru Fest Mini Bingo.  
> Prompt: But You Promised  
> CW: blood and blade injuries, canon-typical violence, some Iruka and Kakashi whumping, mentions of torture.

Kakashi didn't know anymore what was true and what was an illusion planted in his mind.

He was locked in a musty underground room, strapped to a reclining chair, similar to the ones used by the medics for small interventions. But what he went through for the last four days here was far from healing. The Stone shinobi that captured him put so many drugs and mind jutsus in him that he almost didn't know who he was anymore. His head ached, his whole body ached, not with serious injuries, he hoped, but battered by the fight he lost before they brought him here.

Kakashi clung desperately to his conditioned mental barriers, embedded into his mind by the rigorous anti-interrogation training all ANBU had to go through. As one of the elite shinobi in the village, he also got some special Yamanaka barriers, the kind that could only be broken by his death.

The enemy knew. They gave up on torturing Kakashi after the first day. Common sense told them that Konoha's Copy Nin would not break even if they tortured him to his last breath. A direct mind attack wouldn't succeed, either. No attempt to tear the hidden scroll location out from Kakashi's mind would work. And their mission success depended on getting that scroll.

So, their only chance of stripping Kakashi of his precious secret was an indirect approach.

They had the perfect shinobi for that.

⁂

The tokubetsu jounin arrived the day after Kakashi was captured. He was a slim man with blueish short hair, cold purple eyes, a neat Mist uniform and headband, and a gloomy air about him. He couldn’t be older than thirty. 

Kakashi watched him interact with the other shinobi as the Mist captain updated him with the mission report. His authority over the other shinobi was evident. His controlled body language reminded Kakashi of the genjutsu users he knew. He gave a strong interrogator expert vibe.

 _So, this is the one who’s going to try to break my mind,_ Kakashi thought. He looked like a tough adversary. Kakashi mentally braced himself for what was coming.

“Let’s start,” the interrogator said, walking to Kakashi’s chair, and talking to him for the first time, with a cold smile. “My name is Q. I hope this won’t take too long.”

⁂

Kakashi was shaking, on the brink of collapse. Another drop of sweat rolled from his forehead and disappeared into the rim of his mask.

"We overdid it, Q-sensei. He's totally incoherent now. I don't think we'll get anything useful from him," Q's assistant said, wary.

"Not at all. He's finally where I wanted him."

Q looked at the pattern plotted by the whirring machine to his left. The small sensors attached to Kakashi's scalp kept sending their tiny lightning chakra impulses to the device, which had slowly changed its spiky strokes into the curvy mind wave pattern Q had been waiting for. The steady alpha waves showed Kakashi was now open to the right inputs, and Q knew how to provide them.

Q placed two fingers on Kakashi's temple, delicately, precisely, like a caress. He closed his eyes, letting the chakra carrier waves coming from Kakashi's brain sink into him. For now he was only going to receive the signal.

The images started to form in Q's mind. He was seeing the world like he was looking through Kakashi's eye.

He saw a room with wide windows, a sort of office. He saw a brown-haired man, shinobi, chuunin, quite plain-looking. His only significant features were a tight high brown pony-tail, and a horizontal scar that crossed his face over his nose. He sat at a desk, writing something. The man lifted his eyes and his face lightened up with a smile. "Kakashi-san! Welcome back," he said, and Q could feel a wave of warm feelings running though Kakashi's mind. _Iruka._ Q read the thought of this single word, wrapped in an intense mix of emotions.

_Affection, desire, protectiveness._

"Bingo." Q's jutsu targets used to think first of their most precious people. He almost felt disappointed of how easy it had been to get this important piece of information out of Kakashi's mind.

But Q was cautious. There was the possibility that Kakashi was playing him. Not very likely, but experience taught him the hard way that the best shinobi were hard to control and could come up with unpleasant surprises. Q was going to be very careful around Sharingan no Kakashi. He wouldn't catch him by surprise.

Enough of receiving. Q had collected enough data to be able to emit.

Q spoke without removing his attention from Kakashi. "Everyone but Shinichi, leave. Do not disturb me until I call for you. Lower the lights to half intensity." His assistants obeyed in silence. The lights dimmed, the door closed with a soft click, leaving in the room only Q, his chuunin assistant and Kakashi.

Q took a deep breath. He removed Kakashi’s mask, lowering it under his chin. He placed both hands over Kakashi's forehead, only the tips of his fingers brushing Kakashi's skin. He closed his eyes and started projecting.

⁂

_Where am I? Ah, yes. Stone shinobi got me. They've been torturing me for days._

Kakashi shakes his head, feeling dizzy. He's still bound to the chair, and feels like a train run over him.

"You're awake. Good."

The deep voice startles Kakashi. There in the back of the room is his torturer, Q. He's not alone.

Kakashi can't see clearly, everything is blurred. He scrunches his eye closed, opens it again. He wishes he could use his sharingan, but it's hidden beneath a tight cloth band and he can't use his hands to uncover it.

Kakashi tries to force his vision clear. Q is keeping hold of someone, his arm around their neck. Kakashi barely makes out a Konoha shinobi uniform, with a green vest, blue shirt and pants, and a red spiral in its sleeve. He sees dark hair and tanned skin.

_No, it can't be._

Kakashi gets his eyesight back enough to recognize the shinobi Q is holding against his chest. It's Iruka.

"Let him go." Kakashi's voice is raspy.

Q is holding a kunai in his free hand. He raises that hand to Iruka's neck, presses the kunai right over his jugular vein. "Tell me where the scroll is, or I kill him."

Kakashi is frozen in his seat. He doesn't speak.

Suddenly his confusion clears away and he knows it deep inside. This is not Iruka. This is a mind trick.

Iruka looks at Kakashi with an anguished look in his expressive eyes. He doesn't speak either, but his right hand forms the field sign for _Help_.

"I mean it." Q presses the kunai a bit more, until it pricks Iruka's skin. A trickle of blood runs down Iruka's neck. Kakashi still doesn't react.

Q curses, disappointed, and slides his kunai on Iruka's neck in an intent horizontal move. A gush of blood flows from Iruka's wound. He groans and struggles in Q's lock, until his strength gives in and his knees bend. Q holds Iruka until he's motionless, and lets him go. Iruka falls to the ground, lifeless.

"Of course, too direct. You didn't even need your sharingan. There was something I didn't get right, wasn't it? "

Kakashi is shaking. Even if he knows the dead body lying face down at Q's feet is a fake, seeing Iruka's blood spilled like this and his life flowing through the terrifying wound has disturbed Kakashi deeply.

"Okay. Let's try a different thing."

There is a glitch in Kakashi's mindscape, like a movie scene changed too fast, with a bad editing.

⁂

_Where am I? Oh, yes, Stone shinobi have been torturing me._

Kakashi opens his eye. Iruka cuts the restraints on Kakashi's wrists and leans on his chair, shaking. A trickle of blood falls from his nose.

Kakashi wipes the blood from Iruka's upper lip with his thumb, carefully. "You're poisoned." From some remote corner in Kakashi's mind there comes the knowledge that it's a bad poison. A deadly one.

Iruka raises his blood-injected eyes. "Kakashi, I need the scroll. The antidote combination is in there."

Kakashi is confused. There's something, like an itch at the rim of his's consciousness, like a distant tinkling of bells. Something in this setting is not right.

This Iruka doesn't feel like Iruka.

Then suddenly Kakashi remembers, and it clicks.

This time Q managed to erase himself from the scene. "You're getting better," Kakashi says, to no one.

Q clicks his tongue, disappointed. This one was nearer, but not near enough.

Another harsh change of scene. It's starting to give Q whiplash, but he will endure it for as long as it takes.

⁂

Kakashi is half-sitting, half-lying in the mission room coach, with Iruka in his arms, almost sitting in his lap. No one around seems to notice them, or they are too busy with their own matters.

Iruka kisses Kakashi, they enjoy their kisses and their hands all over each other for a while. "Give me the scroll, I'll take it to the Hokage for you. You've earned some rest," Iruka says, with a bright smile, perhaps too bright. Like those smiles he always gives Kakashi when he comes back from one of his missions.

"I would never hear the end of it if I made you my gopher." Kakashi closes his arms around Iruka's waist, pulling him closer, so close, and goes for another kiss, open mouthed. Iruka pulls his head apart and pushes him away. Kakashi is surprised, looking at Iruka's disappointed face. "What's wrong?" He tries to kiss him again, and Iruka avoids him again and pushes him harder.

"I thought you loved me, Kakashi. You don't want the other ones to see me doing that for you, do you? Am I nothing to you?"

"What are you saying?" Kakashi lets Iruka go, confused. He feels a strange buzzing sensation on the edge of his mind, like something's not right.

_This is not Iruka._

"Oh, come on." Q sighs. He's getting frustrated. He's starting to think that Kakashi is never going to fall for his tricks. But he's been so close, this last time...

Q just has to do better. He flips another mind snap.

⁂

They are under a pouring rain, by the outer training fields. Iruka stands under the downpour, ten feet apart from Kakashi, a pained expression twisting his face.

Iruka's Konoha forehead plate sports a brand new horizontal line striking the leaf symbol engraved on the metal.

"I made my choice, Kakashi. I can no longer live like that."

Iruka comes closer to Kakashi, his body language screaming his need to touch him.

He speaks with intensity, it's the most passionate Kakashi has heard him outside their bedroom.

"Come with me. We'll find a place for us. Together. There has to be one somewhere."

Kakashi's heart is racing, he feels a deep hurt. Iruka deserting Konoha? No, it's not possible. It can't be.

Iruka looks dejected when Kakashi doesn't answer. He wipes the rain water from his eyes, closes the distance between them, and takes Kakashi’s hand. “It’s okay, Kakashi, I understand. Your soul belongs to Konoha, not to me."

Iruka cups Kakashi’s face in his hands, and kisses him under the rain, through Kakashi’s wet fabric mask. It’s not their most pleasurable kiss, but it conveys Iruka’s love into Kakashi’s confused mind.

“I wish you would come with me. I wish you loved me enough to leave Konoha behind, but I know it would break you. Perhaps not tomorrow, or not soon. But after some time you would get to resent me, to hate me for making you betray your deepest beliefs. You could even come to hate yourself.” Iruka kisses Kakashi again, and hugs him, hiding his face in Kakashi’s vest. Kakashi thinks he’s crying, he thinks they’re both crying, but he can’t know for sure under the rain.

“I would never do that to you. To us. But I can’t stay after what they did to Naruto. They let him grow up alone and feeling hated by everyone around. They let him be manipulated and die at Mizuki’s hands. I don’t want to be here anymore. I can’t.”

Kakashi hugs Iruka back, clinging to him, feeling a deep despair overcome him. 

“I will always love you. Even if you stay. But I still need to ask something from you." Iruka sobers up. "Wait until tomorrow to report me. Perhaps this way I would make it far enough to escape the hunter nins. And the scroll you hid in your last mission would help me survive. I don’t think I will make it without it.”

Kakashi’s emotional turmoil makes it difficult for him to see a reason for Iruka to ask for the location of that scroll.

Difficult, but not impossible. Kakashi lets Iruka go, feeling a wave of relief wash over him on realizing this is not Iruka and he's not defecting Konoha and leaving him behind.

“You almost got me this time. Very clever, trying to make my loyalty conflict with my affections to distract me. But you’re wasting your time.”

Q almost feels the impulse to stomp his foot on the floor in frustration. Another failed attempt, but there’s no time to fuss over it. He launches his next one. 

⁂

Iruka's fiery eyes pierce into Kakashi's as he sinks his tanto between Kakashi's ribs.

Kakashi coughs blood and clutches Iruka's ANBU vest as his legs give away. He slides to the ground. Iruka kneels down with him, dragged by Kakashi's iron clutch.

"But... But you promised... You promised you'd stay by me."

"And you believed me? Shinobi shouldn't trust anyone, Kakashi. You know how it works."

Blood tears from Obito's eye slide down Kakashi's maskless face.

"You said you loved me."

"I said many things."

Iruka twists the tanto. Kakashi gasps in pain, and then his vision focuses and he huffs a laugh.

"You're not Iruka."

Q snarls. "Tell me where the fucking scroll is so we can stop this." Q's cruel words coming out in Iruka's beloved voice make Kakashi want to throw up.

"I'm not the one in a hurry. Believe me, you'll get tired first."

Q pulls the tanto out of Kakashi viciously, ripping his chest open. Kakashi passes out.

⁂

Kakashi wakes up in the Stone underground torture room, feeling like death warmed over. He’s tired, so very tired. His body just wants to go back to sleep badly, but there is too much noise and commotion around, so he stays awake.

 _What new nightmare has Q set up?_ There's a fight in the room, the Stone shinobi he's got familiar with in the last days are fighting with Konoha shinobi.

Kakashi gets into alert mode. He's learned his lesson well, and he distrusts anything his senses feed him.

"Kakashi, it's over. We got you." He hears Iruka's voice, again. Kakashi turns his head, wary of what he'll see.

Iruka cuts Kakashi's restraints, like he's done several times in Q's induced scenarios, and helps him sit up, carefully. "Are you okay?"

"Yes." Kakashi's face is emotionless. He jerks away from Iruka's hand on his arm. Iruka looks at him with a hurt expression.

"Leave it, Q. I'm not giving you the scroll."

Iruka looks confused. Kakashi tries to ignore him, but even if he knows this is not Iruka Kakashi still doesn't have it in him to be calm and collected while being harsh to Iruka.

"What scroll?"

Kakashi looks at Iruka so fast he almost hurts his neck.

This has to be the real Iruka.

A raw scream gets Kakashi's attention. He turns in time to see ANBU Cat pulling his sword out of Q's chest. Q stumbles back until his back hits the wall behind. He slides down to the floor, leaving a red strike on the dirty bone white tiles.

The fight around is over, Konoha people won. The Stone shinobi are dead or captured. If the scene Kakashi is watching is real, and he is pretty sure this time it is, it means Konoha sent some of their best people to rescue him, including Genma and Tenzou. And Iruka.

⁂

Kakashi walked up unsteadily to where Q was struggling to breathe, choking on his own blood. Kakashi crouched by him.

Q looked at Kakashi, unapologetic. "Congrats. You managed to keep that fucking scroll hidden."

"I told you I could keep going on for a long time."

Q looked up at Iruka, who stood behind Kakashi, unaware of what they were talking about, but alert.

"At this point I feel like I know him as much as you do. I still don’t understand what’s so special about him." Q smiled an ugly red smile, spitting more blood. "That's a nice dream you two have going on there. Keep on dreaming. It won't last."

Kakashi didn't answer. People like Q were just unable to understand love because they were unable to feel it. That’s what made Q so good at his job, but that was also his biggest downfall. 

There was no point in telling that to Q now, anyway. Kakashi decided he was just going to let him die in peace.

Kakashi stood up and turned to Iruka as Q coughed again and breathed for the last time.

"Let's get out of here." Kakashi smiled at Iruka, and felt the pain and the tiredness collected through the last days lessen a bit as Iruka smiled back at him. Iruka passed an arm around Kakashi’s waist to help him walk out of that dreadful room.

Going up the stairs turned out to be too much for Kakashi's current state of exhaustion. He had to stop after a few steps to keep from passing out. Iruka went in front of Kakashi and pulled him on his back to carry him for the rest of the way out.

"I'm sorry you have to carry me."

"Shut up, you're weak as a kitten."

“Would you carry me the rest of the way? Would you stay with me?” Kakashi’s voice was muffled by Iruka’s hair.

Iruka chuckled.

“At this point, everyone here knows better than trying to keep me away from you. Yes, silly. I’ll stay with you.”

“Promise?"

“Always, Kakashi.”

Kakashi bundled up in Iruka’s warmth as he got deeply asleep for the rest of the way back to Konoha.

**Author's Note:**

> I used the verb tenses in a strange way: the "real" scenes use past tense, the scenes in Kakashi's mind use present tense. Did it work, or is it just confusing? Feedback about this is appreciated. My apologies if it ends up being confusing.


End file.
